Details, details

Yesterday, in the mailbox...

Japan's Comic Relief
Time
Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 By Bryan Walsh

(...)

But Higashikokubaru's win may have less to do with entertainment than with public dissatisfaction over Japanese politics, increasingly seen as corrupt and ineffective. His predecessor, also an independent, resigned amid corruption allegations, and scandals have forced two of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's top ministers to resign.

Yesterday, on the web...

Support ratings for Abe's Cabinet fall over scandals: Polls
AP

Tokyo, Jan. 29 : Support for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Government has fallen, hit by political funds scandals and concerns about his leadership ability, according to the results of two newspaper polls published on Monday.

The Mainichi, a nationwide newspaper, said 40 percent of the 1,044 respondents to its Jan. 27-28 poll supported the Cabinet, down 6 percentage point the previous poll in December. Those who disapproved rose to 36 percent from 30 percent.

The newspaper attributed the drop to the resignation of Cabinet ministers and their murky use of political funds.

Tomorrow, in the International Herald Tribune, Tokyo edition...

Why Abe Won't Be Japan's Answer to Ronald Reagan: William Pesek
Bloomberg

(...)

Abe can only do as much as his party allows him, and his support is sliding. A Sankei newspaper survey this week showed Abe's approval rating (39.1 percent) fell below his disapproval rating (40.9 percent). Two members of his Cabinet have already resigned in separate scandals. Another, Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa, has come under criticism for calling women ``baby- making machines'' in a Jan. 27 speech...

Uh, no.

Unless I am mistaken (And you frequently are - Ed.) the score is one cabinet minister, one head of the Tax Commission.

I must admit...when you see the same error three times in quick succession in media outlets of record...you start to doubt yourself.

Birth of the Stupid

I do not even know what could possibly be going through the heads of these idiots.

Not one damn thing, it seems.

Japanese lawmakers to visit U.S. over resolution on "comfort women"
Kyodo

A group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers critical of the government's stand on Japan's wartime exploitation of Asian women for sexual servitude plans to visit the United States this spring, the LDP lawmakers said Friday.

The lawmakers said they will travel to the United States in anticipation of a likely move by U.S. lawmakers to introduce a draft resolution denouncing Japan for the act.

The visit could take place during Japan's holiday-studded Golden Week period around early May and the LDP members said they are hoping to exchange opinions with people concerned with the draft resolution.

The parliamentarian league is seeking to revisit a 1993 official statement in which then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged that the Imperial Japanese Army forced women into sexual servitude for its soldiers during World War II in places such as Korea and China, and apologized for their suffering.

The decision to make the visit was reached at a meeting of the league's subcommittee, which is scrutinizing Kono's statement, at the ruling LDP's headquarters in Tokyo on Friday.

Additionally, the league also decided to set up another subcommittee to review the facts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. The parliamentary league is headed by Nariaki Nakayama, former minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology.

Nakayama is a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who did a spell at the World Bank in Washington in 1975-78. That he used to be Monkadaijin is incredibly disheartening.

I can imagine--no, I can't, really--his meeting with Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Nakayama - "Hello, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am a World War II revisionist."

Lantos - "Oh hi, I am Nazi death camp survivor."

--------------------

Hattip to reader MK for alerting me to this absurdity.

Yes, yes, I am aware of the story that the GOJ has hired former Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley to lobby his former Democratic collegues in the House upon this issue.

Has anyone seen the contract?

Reality Starts to Bite

Stratfor has posted a negative outlook for the Japanese economy, echoing many of the concerns I have voiced in several posts over the last half year. It is much needed corrective for the happy talk that has been oozing out of the Kantei and the BOJ--happy talk that has been parroted by the great and good of the international financial system.

Ignore the summary. It is off-the-wall and does not in fact summarize the analysis:

Japan: Dangling on the Edge of Recession
Stratfor

January 30, 2007 19 14 GMT -

Summary - Currency manipulation is shaping up to be a major topic for debate at the upcoming G-7 summit. This time around, however, China will not be the only country facing anger –- so will Japan. Such attention could not come at a worse time for Tokyo.

Analysis - In separate announcements Jan. 29, both the German and Luxembourg finance ministers voiced dissatisfaction with Japan's currency policy. Germany's Peer Steinbrueck said the topic will be brought up at the G-7 summit Feb. 9-10 in his country, while Luxembourg's Jean Claude Junker (who also is the prime minister and the semi-official representative of the common European currency) spoke pointedly. "I want to say more forcefully that Japan's current recovery should be reflected in the yen's exchange rate," he said...

The bright spot in this morass? Stratfor is usually, inexplicably, spectacularly, laughably wrong in its assessments.

A sketch of an idea

Over at my very favorite international economics blog, blogmaster Dr. Brad Setser has started a conversation about a recent comment that former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers made at the recent World Economic Forum:

Making the intellectual case for free trade and then simply "paying off" some of the losers in globalization, Mr. Summers said, will not work for world leaders trying to sell the current round of global trade talks to a skeptical polity.

"That's the Davos lie," Mr. Summers said during a dinner Friday night.

Here is my interpretation of what "the Davos lie" might be, which I have cross posted in the comments section of Dr. Setser's blog:

In their advocacy of the benefits that would accrue from globalization, the Davos elite underestimated the extent that globalization's success would alter basic international economics parameters. They were particularly purblind about the effect that globalization would have upon their own behavior.

Under the paradigm, the transfer of work to lower-wage countries would "free up labor in advanced economies to move into emerging or non-tradable occupations." However, the speed at which this transfer took place exceeded estimates, removing work from the advanced economies, lowering the wages and benefits that labor could demand.

The elites also missed the syllogism that since multinational corporate labor costs were going to be so much lower, corporate profits were going to be so much higher--and that since corporate profits had increased, the corporate elite was going to reward itself for its probity--and the rest of the elite would see to it also was recognized as worthy of better remuneration as well.

Unless the corporate elites paid their remaining workers a higher wage and forewent paying themselves better, inequality within nations would skyrocket. No amount of retraining and goods price decreases was going to halt the relative decline in the economic status (note the wording: economic status, not the quality of life) of the numerical majority.

The elites, most of which hail from democratic societies, nevertheless failed to appreciate that globalization could not only erode the majority's economic status, it would erode its political status as well. When the elites amass vast fortunes that they can use to buy political influence or pay for deceptive political campaigns, the purportedly sovereign majority finds itself effectively disenfranchised.

Globalization has improved in the aggregate the physical welfare of the populations brought into contact with the new global market. The "Davos lie" was that the number of individuals suffering traumatic adjustment effects would be small and the price of remediation would be limited. The truth was that if the elites did not curb their avarice voluntarily, globalization was going to shift power from labor and government to capital, with unforeseen deleterious effects upon political and economic justice.

Later - For an illustration on how the "Davos lie" plays out in the Japanese context, the Financial Times has published a good article about Japan's stagnating personal consumption.

The Yanagisawa Report

A weekly wrapup of the news, brought to us by Health and Welfare Minister Yanagisawa Hakuo, exhibiting his unique perspective on events.

Gripping National Production

Courtesy: AP

President and double dinger sperm injector George W. Bush greets super productive baby machine Nancy Pelosi prior to a limp State of the Union address.

Ancient Get-ups

Courtesy: Embassy of Egypt

Former Prime Minister and near hat-trick (one shot went in after time had expired) sperm injector Koizumi Jun'ichiro celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Japan-Egypt Cultural Cooperation Agreement with Ambassador Hisham Al-Badr, who is such a nice guy I will say nothing even remotely naughty about him.

A Failed Marriage

Courtesy: Reuters

Prime Minister and presumably functioning sperm injector unit holds hands with his unsuccessful baby making machine as they descend the access stairs at Cebu International Airport.


In other words...Yanagisawa's meeting with the PM at the Kantei--after his reconceptualization of adult Japanese women as baby-making machines who need to improve their per capita production--must have been AWKWARD.

Holy Zhongnanhai Batman!

If the Political Bureau of the CCP had a MySpace page, Today's Mood would be: Exceptionally Friendly.

While life for the Abe Cabinet is otherwise going to hell in a handbasket the relationship with China is soaring:

CCTV to screen series on Japan
China Daily

By Li Xiaokun - Updated: 2007-01-30 As China-Japan relations thaw the national television network has announced plans for a series on Japanese society.

CCTV will launch the series in early March, the TV station said yesterday.

The 20-part series, called Yansong: Eyes on Japan, comes as details are finalised for Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Japan in April.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited China in October.

"We thought we were familiar with Japan, but it's not the case," said well-known TV personality Bai Yansong, who will present the programs. "Actually it's a very strange country to many Chinese people.

"As the national and largest network, it's our duty to provide a comprehensive and objective view of Japan," he added.

CCTV will send its biggest ever team of journalists to Japan on March 4 to begin working on the series.

Their 15-20 day screening schedule will cover exclusive interviews with at least 10 Japanese figures in fields ranging from politics and economics to the arts.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie Abe, former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, famous author Junichi Watanabe and actor Ken Takakura who are all well known in China, will be interviewed.

Several documentaries will also be produced, covering topics like Japanese history, the nation's animation industry, sumo wrestling, the young generation, and the aging society.

Well, I guess CCTV announcer Rui Chenggang's September 30 blog post was foreshadowing, not a wild anomaly.

Does anyone know which faction/grouping/ministries in the Chinese government or the CCP would end up profiting from a sudden rush to improve Japan's image in China? The approval for these attitude shifts must be coming from up on high.

Bringing myself back down to the muddy earth, I cannot wait to hear what Robyn Lim and the folks at Heritage, American Enterprise and CDI in Washington's environs will be offering as an explanations for this precipitous change.

No, really, I am serious.

Later - Here is the Jiji Tsushin report on the new television series.

A Swamp By Any Other Name

Inba Marsh (印旛沼) is a depressing, trash-choked elbow of abused water just to the west of the city of Narita. The local "wild bird forest" (野鳥の森）abuts a toxic waste disposal site.

It is also the best preserved wetlands south of the Tonegawa.

If Abe Shinzō were the least bit serious about his "a beautiful country" schtick, he would stop mucking about with the constitution and instead focus on making sure that the tax revenues so painfully extracted from the core cities were no longer wasted on unused roadways, tunnels, jetties...et al... and instead were consecrated to getting the underemployed clients of LDP politicians in the countryside to reve up their construction equipment and trucks in order to drag up, haul out and properly dispose of the trash that besmirches nearly every square kilometer of this country.

Yes, I was ticked off by the visible evidence of moral rot in the body politic on Sunday...and my mood was not in the best of shape to start off with after reading the Tokyo Shimbun's account of a suspiciously reactionary set of results from a recent government-sponsored poll on possible changes to the Family Law.

According to the report, poll results released by the Cabinet Office (内閣府）on Saturday (Warning! Warning!) found support eroding for a change in the Family Law that would allow spouses to retain their own birth names after marriage.

(Actually, such a change would extend to the entire population an exception to the current law which already exists for mixed nationality couples --but pointing out that inconsistency will get you uninvited from some rather remarkably well-catered events)

The survey found support for a revision--which it curiously defines as "Whether the law is changed or not, I do not care"--falling from 42.1% in 2001 to only 36.6% in 2006. It finds that opposition to the change--which again it curiously frames as "It is unnecessary to change the current law" (Somehow I am thinking that the question, "Even if it is 'unnecessary' would it be still be a neat thing to do?" was not the follow-up) rising from 29.8% to 35.0%

OK, let us say I have reason to be skeptical of anything that might cast a sharp light on the iniquities and traditionalist hogwash that stain the Family Law.

But even those with a far less acidic view of both the government and its goals have got to feel queasy about the Cabinet Office's November-December 2006 survey.

First of all, the damn thing's unreadable- formatted with seemingly no other purpose but to obscure information. Who can make sense of this kind of stuff?

Second, the manner of collecting the survey's results--door-to-door interviews--invites manipulation. Depending on what time of day the survey takers rang the doorbell or knocked on the door, they would have recorded damnably different results. Indeed, of the "5000 persons surveyed" it turns out that 2,234 did not answer the questions, either because they were not at home, had moved, were too ill or did not want to respond (1,116 "refused to participate").

Third, the survey was not carried out by Hōmushō personnel but a private contractor. This alone gives me the willies. Do you think the contractor might have had a clue beforehand as to what kind of results an Abe Cabinet Hōmushō might be looking to receive?

No?

The day at Inba Marsh was not a total waste. In the space of a few hours, I saw:

ハシボソガラス
Corvus corone
Carrion Crow
ヒヨドリ
Hypsepetes amaurotis
Brown-Eared Bulbul
ムクドリ
Sturmus cinerea
Gray Starling
ハクセキレイ
Motacilla alba
Pied Wagtail
キジバト
Streptopilia orientalis
Eatern Turtle Dove
カイツブリ
Tachybaptus rufficollis
Little Grebe
ダイサギ
Ardea alba
Great Egret
アオサギ
Ardea cinerea
Grey Heron
コサギ
Egretta garzetta
Little Egret
コガモ
Anas crecca
Common Teal
オオバン
Fulica atra
Common Coot
ウミウ
Phalocrocorax capillatus
Japanese Cormorant
バン
Gallinula chloropus
Moorhen
モズ
Lanius bucephalus
Bull-Headed Shrike
マガモ
Anas platyrhynchos
Mallard
ユリカモメ
Larus ridibundus
Black-Headed Gull
カモメ
Larus canus
Common Gull
カワラヒワ
Carduelis sinica
Oriental Greenfinch
カワセミ
Alcedo atthis
Common Kingfisher
アオジ
Emberiza spodocephala
Black-Faced Bunting
オオジュリン
Emberiza schoeniclus
Reed Bunting
ツグミ
Turdus naumanni
Dusky Thrush
シロハラ
Turdus palidus
Pale Thrush
アカハラ
Turdus chrysolaus
Red-Bellied Thrush
シジュカラ
Parus major
Great Tit
ジョウビタキ
Phoenicurus auroreus
Daurian Redstart

Seeing fewer species of birds and no trash would have made me a lot happier, though.

Give that man a hand

Over at Global Talk 21, the inimitable Jun Okumura puts the headlock on the British Broadcasting Corporation's overreach on the term taibatsu, and quite properly pleads for a revision.

This is how mistakes and lies take on a life of their own, folks.

Speaking of which, can someone please tell Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to keep her ideas about certain kanji to herself?

Hakuna Matata Sōridaijin

As noted earlier, our current prime minister never has a problem with anything his ministers say or do. As long as they keep their jaws moving until they sort of sound contrite, he's happy.

久間防衛相、米批判を釈明
Nikkei Net

安倍晋三首相は25日夕、久間章生防衛相がブッシュ米大統領のイラク開戦の判断を批判したことについて、防衛相から同日、衆院本会議場で釈明を受けたことを明らかにした。久間氏は「開戦前の認識を示したものだ」として、開戦を支持する閣議決定に異論を唱えた発言ではないとの認識を伝えたという。首相官邸で記者団に語った。首相は記者団に「問題ないと思う」との認識を示した。

"I don't think that there's a problem," said the prime minister to assembled journalists.

I am way too aggressive in my use of the indicative...but does Prime Minister Abe really need to bracket his statement with "to omou" when he is talking about his own judgment?

Daytrips in February

From time to time I tease with photos of recent daytrips.

If the weather is clear on the Sundays of next month, here are some of the places I am thinking of visiting:

February 4 - Futagoyama - Across the Miura Peninsula from Zushi to Taura through a fairly unbroken stand of lowland broad-leafed evergreen forest, up over the ridge at Futagoyama and terminating in a visit to the plum groves (they should be in full bloom) on the hills above the Yokosuka naval bases.


February 11 - Nokogiriyama - Perhaps the Kantō Region's best one day trip. Down to the Miura Peninsula by train, across Tokyo Bay by ferry, then up the mountain, either on foot or by cable car to...


February 18 - Manazuru Peninsula / Shiroyama - A visit in the morning to the peninsula, its port and its religious sites, followed by a climb up in the afternoon up Shiroyama for the view. Hot water fanatics can find bathing opportunities around Yugawara. Birding should be good too--easy identification of 20-25 species.


February 25 - Takagawayama in Yamanashi Prefecture - a fairly brief, easy ascent to one of the most spectacular luncheon views around, followed by a visit to an early Meiji elementary school at the mountain's base.


If you are interested in joining me on any of these day trips, please email me.

As noted at the outset, weather permitting...